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Dell Rejects AMD Chips (again)

Posted by Zonk on from the intel-offers-them-cookies dept.

LarsWestergren writes "A few months ago Slashdot reported that Dell was considering using AMD for server CPUs, but most people rightly remained sceptical since Dell has announced this several times before and always backed out. Well, according to the Register you were right to be sceptical." From the article: "Dell, however, doesn't seem concerned by these pricing issues or the fact that Opteron outperforms Xeon on numerous benchmarks. 'We believe that Intel has responded,' Rollins said in the wire report. 'That is now beginning to put customers more at ease that they don't need to make a shift (to AMD).'"

18 of 353 comments (clear)

  1. Dell will never use AMD by rudy_wayne · · Score: 5, Interesting


    In the '80s Intel sued AMD, twice, for producing 80386 compatible chips. The second time was for trademark infringement, essentially claiming that Intel owned the number '386'. One of the people testifying on behalf of Intel was Michael Dell.

    1. Re:Dell will never use AMD by mabhatter654 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Dell is the biggest PC vendor only because the "bend over" to whatever the MS/intel douopoly wants. To Intel or Microsoft Dell is a nice marketing outsourcing unit, but if they go rouge, both companies will make an "example" of Dell. Dell is a truely competitve company...anybody can replace them overnight. If anybody's hurt by MS & intel's practices it's Dell, because they can't choose their products freely...deviate too much and their toast. But of course, Dell can't say anything... because then they'd instantly be paying "retail" price for windows...or be told to stop selling it. Same with Intel, Dell is "gauranteed" to always get first cut of the chips... they could be "punished" by intel simply missing a shipment of "latest and greatest" causing all the gearheads to buy compaqs instead.

    2. Re:Dell will never use AMD by drgonzo59 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      How exactly is that a 'pretty distinct pattern'? Distinct from what? For any 3 digit number, there is about 0.1% chance that that number will be 386. Why can't a company who's product reached version 1.0.386 sell or market it as 386. What about 001, that is just as distict as 386, can any one claim it as a trademark. How about number 10? Can I trademark that and sue everyone? The point is, that the claim doesn't make any sense, and that is why Intel came up with the name 'Pentium'. In this case, for 26 letters of the alphabet, you have 26^7 = 7 or 8 billion possible trademark names of that lenght. That is a lot better even if 75% of those is unpronounceable, meaningless garbage.

      The drug companies, that have hundreds and thousands of product on the market are running into this problem, they are sometimes using Latin names now to generate all those funky wierd names (Levitra, Alegra, Vioxx, Paxil etc, etc.), they have to be short, unique and easy to pronounce and memorize, there is a whole field of study in that area of brand marketing.

  2. In other words... by jmcmunn · · Score: 2, Interesting


    Dell found cheaper prices for Intel boards/processors and whatnot, and can keep their bargain basement prices without switching vendors. All this means is that they can keep winning the price wars without switching...

    Side note:
    Oh and anyone who still needs a Gmail account...feel free to drop by my page. I have over 600 of them posted. Free for the taking...

    http://www.jiggybyte.com/gmail

    Enjoy...

  3. Re:Apparently, changing chip vendors is too much w by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    maybe dell has used amd to leverage a better deal from intel. we've seen the same thing happen with linux/open source and microsoft. organisations announce they are considering the former until microsoft jumps in with massive price reductions.

  4. Customers are already making a shift. by BoomerSooner · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I use AMD processors in some of my servers and am evaluating purcahsing a new rack full of hardware for migrating off our current servers (mix of AMD & Intel) that are tower based. Monarch Computers (Linux Journal runs on them) is pretty reasonable but I'm also looking at the Sun offerings.

    I like Dell computers reasonably well. However we have decided to go with AMD for multiple reasons. Unfortunately they don't offer what we are looking for and as a result have lost about a $30,000 purchase. Granted 30K is peanuts to them but over time it adds up, one customer here, one customer there.

    Their slogan should be "Dell, providing what we say you need, not what you desire." Hell, even their linux offerings are a joke (workstation side).

    1. Re:Customers are already making a shift. by hb253 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, I hate to insult you, but Dell servers are designed like crap. One example, 2650 with hot-plug power supplies that fail quite often, and that you can't remove without pulling the server out of the rack and opening the cover?? Take a look at the inside of a Compaq. The materials are better, the chassis is solid, not flimsy tinfoil, etc etc.

      --
      Self awareness - try it!
  5. I contacted Dell about a 750k rack server purchase by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    but told them that they absolutely needed to be opteron based (we do mostly processor bound simulations for a DOD client). The sales droid said they would take our specifications and get back to me. About a week later, I get a phone call saying that their wonderful 3.2ghz P4 solution was perfect for our application. So I politely thanked him for the call and bought the systems from another vendor.

    Whatever Intel is doing for them, it must be pretty good...

  6. Re:Dell is back to their old trick... by bdsesq · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Its not quite that simple. Look at what Dvorak says in his latest column--- Intel has been essentially paying OEMs not to use AMD chips.
    You can read the rest at http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050224. html
    Its about half way down the page.

  7. Re:Temperature Liability? by raitchison · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think this is no small part of Dell's decision to stick with Intel.

    In the past when AMD's chips were merely "knock-off's" of Intels they had a lot of relibility problems, mostly related their their heat generation.

    IMO this was caused by them designing chips that had to function like Intel chips but be different enough architecturally to keep them from getting sued (more than they already were). These contradictary requirements resulted in bass-ackwards chip designs that were inefficient. This then caused AMD to push the envelope of what the chips could handle clock speed wise. With the final result being chips with a much higher failure rate (several hundred times higher in my professional career).

    I remember back in 98 or 99 (yes I know ancient history) one coustomer of mine had several thousand HP Vectra PCs, all with Intel chips. They decided to buy a batch of AMD equipped Vectras as each PC was about $30 cheaper with an AMD over an Intel CPU. Out of the 80 or so AMD equipped HP Vectras 11 of them were DOA and another 4 had their processors go out in less than a month. I know that experience left an extremely strong impression in the customers mind and mine as well.

    Now things are definitely different, AMD is doing it's own thing (rather than just copying Intel's chips), doing it extremely well and using their technology and performance as selling points (not just a Still I can see how someone who has been burned (pun intended) by AMD in the past, even the very distant past would be reluctant to try it again. With Intel you know that you are paying too much but you also know nothing is going to go wrong.

    From Dell's position, it's hard to screw up sticking with Intel as long as the number$ add up.

  8. here's another good reason.. by TheHawke · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just got done tangling with a Dell system that got it's onboard VGA plug ripped out (idiot customer didnt unscrew the thumbscrews before he yanked).
    I got a wild idea about putting a MSI board into the case, only to discover that the mounting holes on the backplane do NOT match up with the HSF holes for the mounting bracket.
    I sat back, cussed and stewed over this, only to come to a conclusion that Intel and Dell did a backroom agreement that they would alter the design for the HSF mounting points to keep any customer from doing a swapout of the mainboard without doing some major surgery. Fortunately I went and got a HSF from a local supplier and pretty much bypassed most of the BS that is inside a dell case.
    This looks like that it was no accident, the backplane is 2 centimeters to the right of the holes on the MSI board. If you think that i'm full of it, there are TWO sets of HSF mounting holes on the backplane that are pretty much set up for certain intel boards. None of the P4 boards I have will match up with them.

    --
    First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
    1. Re:here's another good reason.. by ImpTech · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Um, hrm... Dell's been putting out nothing but nonstandard power supplies since at least the Pentium 3 days AFAIK. I've plugged em into standard boards by mistake before. Never burned one, but I'd be careful.

  9. That's notwhat I'm seeing by TWX · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "...Mr Dell is deep in Intel's pocket, and wont be cooperating with AMD any time soon."

    Dell comes out and announces this to keep Intel on its toes and to drive up interest in the company. It's like how Apple maintains an x86 port of the Darwin Kernel that OSX uses; not because they intend to switch to x86, but because it gives them, "see, we don't need to run on Motorola/IBM Power architecture, so if you want us to you'd better give us more of what we want," lattitude with an actual possible way to back it up.

    Dell probably had some negotiations that were not going as well as they had hoped, so they made this announcement. Behind the scenes things got addressed, and now they've retracted it.

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  10. AMD can't produce chips in high enough volume. by Kaldaien · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This has been explained many times in the past. It's true that DELL and Gateway once offered AMD based machines. And one of the reasons they stopped is because AMD could not meet demand.

  11. Re:Apparently, changing chip vendors is too much w by ppanon · · Score: 4, Interesting
    maybe dell has used amd to leverage a better deal from intel. we've seen the same thing happen with linux/open source and microsoft. organisations announce they are considering the former until microsoft jumps in with massive price reductions.
    The funny thing is that while that type of predatory-pricing anti-competitive behaviour would significantly hurt any other type of competition, it hurts Microsoft a lot more than it hurts Suse, Redhat, and other Linux vendors. Linux development will continue regardless, but by caving in with lowball bids, Microsoft is letting everyone else know that it's possible to get those deals if you can put up a believable bluff. It's hurting MS' future earnings and ability to pursue further R&D (aka aquisitions of promising ISVs). MS is in a war of attrition that they, while having a great headstart, are still bound to lose because, outside of Western Europe and N.A., switching to Linux isn't a bluff, it's an economic necessity.
    --
    Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
  12. Re:It's not about quality by Shadow99_1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wow amazingly those numbers are so wrong it's funny... and people think you are being insightful... Geez...

    This has nothing to do with capacity, AMD already makes 1 quarter to 1 third of all x86 compatable cpus... From one plant. One plant I might add that doens't even need to work every day of every month to do that (since they didn't need as many cpu's as they were making they now periodically turn off the cpu equivalent of an assembly line)...

    This is all about Intel payouts and deals the cut Dell... Nothing more.

    --
    we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
  13. Re:Temperature Liability? by ImpTech · · Score: 2, Interesting

    > IMO this was caused by them designing chips that had to function like Intel chips but be different enough architecturally to keep them from getting sued (more than they already were).

    That doesn't really make sense. Architecturally Intel and AMD are and always have been almost identical in that they're both x86. As far as how they actually implement that architecture, its pretty impossible for two separate entities to create the same chip unless they use the exact same plans, which in the case of Intel and AMD would imply that someone stole secret documents from the other. You can't really create a "knockoff" microprocessor the way other products are knocked-off, ie. by reverse engineering. Or rather, you could, but its probably easier to design your own.

    IMO what happened is AMD simply got better at designing high performance microprocessors. Maybe they hired some smart people, or maybe its because of their increasing level of partnership with IBM, or maybe they just learned from their mistakes. Of course Intel's colossally bad design for the Pentium 4 probably helped too.

  14. Re:Equivalent to Dell selling AMD? by BobKagy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I believe at the time their systems came with 1 year of free on site support. If their phone tech support determined there was a hardware problem, they'd send someone out to do the work.

    It appears this option is still available as "At-Home Service".

    Not sure what their support is currently like. They sent a guy to my house to replace my CD-ROM back in 1996 without asking too many questions.

    Tech: What's the problem?
    Me: The CD tray stops half way when I press the close button.
    Tech: Ok. We'll send out a tech to replace it. Will you be available Tuesday from 1-3pm?
    I think the conversation was a little longer, but it didn't take multiple calls or many hoops.

    AMD lists several places to buy AMD64 systems, many of which offer the same optional on-site repair contract. Not sure who lives up to their claims, but for that I'll have to read the reviews as it sounds like few actually do these days.